![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Jimmy-Carter-20241229-300x166.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With all the praise for Jimmy Carter, our former worst President ever (both because he passed and it seems to be agreed that Biden surpassed him long ago)\u00a0 there is a legit story around that paints Carter in an extremely favorable light.<\/p>\n
As we all know, Carter was an engineering officer who had the best training available at the time to serve on the second nuclear sub, the Seawolf., and had access to all the latest and greatest info on nuclear reactors (except for that one failed class in which he failed to learn how to pronounce them correctly. NUKE-le-ar, Jimmy, not nuke you-lar.)<\/p>\n
So when Canada’s Chalk River nuclear research facility experienced a power surge that damaged its reactor, the U.S. sent Carter and his team. He was one of a few people in the world who could do it.<\/p>\n
Fuel rods at the research reactor experienced a partial meltdown after the power surge. It ruptured the reactor and flooded the facility’s basement with radioactive water, rendering the reactor core unusable.<\/p>\n
In his 2015 autobiography, “A Full Life: Reflections At Ninety,” Carter described the incident and his preparations for repairing the reactor. They built an exact replica of the reactor, true to the last detail (except the actual nuclear material) on a nearby tennis court to practice and track their progress.<\/p>\n
Carter and his 22 other team members were separated into teams of three and lowered into the reactor for 90-second intervals to clean the site. It was estimated that a minute-and-a-half was the maximum time humans could be exposed to the levels of radiation present in the area.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You thought ‘peeing hot’ meant recreational chemicals in your urine. In Carter’s case, it was radioactivity – he had measurable amounts in his urine for six MONTHS after his work in Canada ended.<\/p>\n
“They let us get probably a thousand times more radiation than they would now. It was in the early stages, and they didn’t know.”<\/p>\n
The exposure was especially dangerous for Carter, whose family medical history is full of cancer deaths. His father died of pancreatic cancer in 1953, which led to Carter leaving the Navy that year. Cancerous tumors were found on the former president’s liver and brain in 2015 as he turned 91, but quick diagnosis and treatment led to a cancer-free bill of health a year later. Military.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Carter’s father and three siblings all died of pancreatic cancer. Given the timeline (the reactor incident was December 1952, Carter’s six month nuke school billet started in March 1953, his father died July 1953) it looks difficult to know if he knew of his father’s cancer before he went to Canada, especially given the relative crudity of cancer detection at the time. But if a reactor is so hot inside that your time is limited to a minute and a half while wearing all the protection – just volunteering for that minute and a half takes some serious stones.<\/p>\n
As many have said, Carter’s best work by far was when he was not in the White House. Me, I’m thinking he (and the other 22!) deserve all the props for working in THAT environment.<\/p>\n
By the way, the Chalk River reactor has had several incidents since then but is still in ooperation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"